


City Life

by holyfant



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-21
Updated: 2008-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 00:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They travel, find each other and themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	City Life

**Author's Note:**

> this started out as a piece for the 2008 Femmeslash Porn Battle, but because of crazy RL I only finished it now. Moreover, the smut that was mandatory for the porn battle never really found its way in, hence the rating. Still, this is based on the prompt: Ginny/Tonks, cities. Rather AU, with no mention of Tonks/Remus. Unbeta'ed.

i. London

“Let’s be tourists,” Tonks says earnestly, although her solemn tone is contradicted by the flaming violet of her hair.

Ginny hates tourists. She hates how they walk around as if they own something they’ve only come to visit, she hates how they assume everyone speaks their language and she hates the Hawaiian shirts, the cameras, the flip-flops in September. She tells Tonks so, a little hesitantly (because Tonks is wearing her shoulders higher than she’s done in some time, and she’s smiling at a sky that’s carefully blue, and her hair is bright). It’s been some time since she’s been in London – her Hogwarts days are over, but she still doesn’t feel the need to discover the other side of the city.

“I just don’t like how people try to be hip in a city they know nothing about,” she finishes, not exactly knowing how to hold her hands (Tonks is standing a little close).

Tonks touches a hand to Ginny’s shoulder. “It’s not about being hip, kid. With that hair, you never will be.” A grin (and Ginny’s heart misses a beat – it’s been so long since she’s seen Tonks smiling). “It’s about broadening your horizon, if you’ll excuse the pedantic formulation. The world has more to offer than Hogwarts or rain or English or shepherd’s pie. Not that those aren’t wonderful. It’s just, there’s more and everyone should at least be a little aware of that, you know? And when it’s about seeing the world, you should start where you were born and try to see the oddities in what we think is normal.”

“I am aware of the fact that other things exist,” Ginny says, but more pro forma than she intended (because the image of her and Tonks, strolling leisurely through Hyde Park and past Piccadilly Circus or Saint Paul’s has popped into her head, and somehow it doesn’t seem wrong at all to do this, on this soft day with a tentative sun).

“You have to look properly,” Tonks simply says.

“Well then,” Ginny says, “but only if you’ll get me home on time. Mum’ll kill me otherwise.”

“I have no desire whatsoever to bear your mother’s wrath, kid, don’t worry. I know Molly well enough to want to avoid that at all cost.”

Ginny looks at Tonks, and sees the colours of the city on her face. She’s beautiful. “And no Hawaiian shirts,” she adds a little weakly, feeling something pooling in her stomach (something warm, something like this careful spring day with a young sun playing with willing clouds).

“Never,” Tonks swears, “let’s just say we are travellers, not tourists.”

Ginny can live with that, and when the sun falls on their faces in Hyde Park, Tonks puts a hand in Ginny’s neck and squeezes it gently.

 

((four months, in which they meet at the Burrow and smile and eat Molly’s dishes and chat idly over the laden table))

 

ii. Brussels

Their hotel on the outskirts of the city is a little dodgy (and so is the neighbourhood). The breakfast consists out of one chewy croissant and a little bit of jam, and the sheets on their beds are slightly damp. Tonks tells Ginny that’s the Belgian way – they like their beds clammy, their soup lukewarm and their showers hot. Ginny’s not sure what to think of this, until she musters up the courage to ask a girl walking a dog in the Warandepark, who says in a very accented English that this is the funniest question she’s ever received from a foreigner.

Tonks gently smacks Ginny’s head. “You’re being a tourist,” she grins, to which Ginny promptly replies that no, she isn’t, because a tourist would go on without asking anyone and proceed to put blatant untruths like that on the web, while a traveller verifies what their guide (completely untrustworthy, by the way) has told them. Tonks smiles and takes her to Thurn & Taxis, and shows her how the city has grown since its founding. Ginny believes her when she says Brussels is one of those difficult cities of which the beauty is sometimes hard to find under the grey stone, the grey sky, the grey social problems. She can see it in the people’s faces – they are guarded, they grab their handbags; but whenever they don’t know you’re looking, they watch their city bustling with love. There are African people wearing traditional clothing everywhere, which immediately makes Ginny love everything about Brussels – its confused jumble of styles and ethnicities, its strange location in a strangely divided country, its double language, its crazy traffic, its colours hidden in the tiny streets.

Back in the hotel, Tonks pushes their beds together and tells Ginny she sometimes snores. Before they go to sleep, Tonks tells her about Expo ’58 (magical in ways other than they know) and the Atomium, and the little boy happily pissing away his worries and those of the land – and then she kisses Ginny goodnight, somewhere in the dark between her mouth and her cheek.

“Goodnight,” Ginny whispers after minutes, her heart still racing and her head trying to convince her she simply missed her cheek in the dark, but Tonks is already snoring.

 

((six months, in which they reminisce about Belgium when they’ve had a little Firewhiskey))

 

iii. Paris

It’s a thirty minute walk from their hotel to Île de la Cité. The weather is only so-so and Paris is streaked grey, shrouded in wetness. Ginny doesn’t mind; it’s when the sun does break through the heavy clouds on unexpected moments that she enjoys the most. This is what happens in the Notre Dame de Paris: “Look,” Tonks breathes in her neck from behind her (and it’s a wonder she hears, with all the people disrespecting the “Maison de dieu, silence s.v.p” signs around them) and she puts her hands on Ginny’s head to guide her eyes. The giant rose window is sparkling like a star as it’s hit by a sun beam, scattering its bright colours onto the cathedral floor and the tourists.

“Wow,” Ginny says, and for a moment she’s confused about whether she’s awed by the undeniably gorgeous display of colour, or by Tonks’ hands on her forehead and her body close. (Later she decides it must’ve been the combination of both.)

“We need books,” Tonks tells her later, and the subway races them through the underground of the city like thunder and takes them to the biggest library Ginny has ever seen – the buildings books themselves, the human like ants under the scrutinising sky-scrapers. Tonks seems to know her way around here, but when Ginny asks her when she’s been to Paris before, Tonks says she hasn’t. (She’s just good with books.) They end up loaning The Hunchback of the Notre Dame, because, as Tonks puts it, they have to do at least one despicably tourist-y thing.

Afterwards, they lose their way in Quartier Latin. On the way, Ginny’s bought a baret (that’s two despicably tourist-y things, then, but she doesn’t really care) and she feels ridiculously French, especially when she manages to reply ‘non, merci’ to one of the waiters trying to lure people into his restaurant. They end up in a Greek place (which makes Tonks laugh, because really, what on earth are they doing in a Greek restaurant the one time they’re in France?) where the dishes are thrown to the floor at the end of the meal for good luck. Ginny feels lucky.

The nights in Paris are heavy with sound and the windows of the hotels don’t open, to keep out the car fumes, the receptionist tells them. Ginny stays awake, listens to Tonks contributing to the night’s sounds and feels as if every point of her body is being invaded by the smell of Tonks, earthy and maybe a bit sweaty (too tired to shower, too everything to do anything). In the morning, Tonks wakes her, flashing red hair and white teeth.

“Let’s pretend to know something about art today,” she says. Turns out Ginny really does know something about art, even if it’s just why a painting manages to get to her and why not – and as she explains what she’s seeing in Mark Rothko’s soft/angry fading/cursing lines in Centre Pompidou, Tonks stops her for a moment to hug her. It takes a second before Ginny remembers to respond in kind.

Three days later, they feel a little less intimidated by Hausmann’s impressive city and a little more at home in Paris – although Ginny wonders if this city can ever truly be a home, as grand and confusingly spiralling as it is (but then she looks at Tonks and the ease with which she moves through a city she’s never visited before and thinks, maybe).

 

((four months, in which they like to be in each other’s presence, even if it is only in the garden of the Burrow, especially if it is in the garden of the Burrow when it’s already dark and everybody’s getting ready to sleep))

 

iv. Barcelona

August in Spain is swelteringly hot. Ginny reminds Tonks she really rather would’ve gone in September or October, but Tonks simply smiles at her. She says some people do have jobs, you know (unlike some other people) and some people also really like the heat of Spain, its strangely fulfilling dryness, its trembling air above the scorching streets where the old ladies stroll and shuffle and cook and talk in fast, shrill voices. (When put like that, Ginny can’t find any counter-arguments, especially not when Tonks shrugs off her vest to expose sharp shoulders a little shiny with sweat.)

It’s difficult to remain focused, this time, as the city is one big mirage of shimmering streets and odour-filled fumes (not unpleasant, but breathtaking, literally, and then Ginny looks at Tonks who’s standing with her eyes closed behind her sunglasses, hair short and almost white to avoid the heat and she feels as if she could suffocate then). They seek refuge in the coolness of Gaudí’s surreal houses, with their twisting lines and shifting rooftops. Ginny loves Gaudí instantly, although she’s burned as red as his rooftop stones at the end of the day. Tonks orders her a sangria in a small café and when it comes, she fishes out the ice cubes and drags them gently over Ginny’s red-hot shoulders. Ginny raves about Gaudí.

Tonks listens, then says: “And we haven’t even been to the Sagrada Família yet,” and when she smiles at Ginny then, Ginny remembers how she used to think it was stupid to love architects of far distant countries and how it was silly to admire buildings you were never going to live in. (It’s strange, but something she thinks then, fuzzy with the heat and the exquisite sangria: Tonks is a building I will never live in, and I still admire her. Tonks, with her twisting lines and eye-defying colours. “Tonks,” Ginny says solemnly, “if Gaudí was god instead of architect, you’re what he would have made.” Tonks laughs openly and doesn’t stop for at least five minutes.)

And then the Sagrada Família is there (no, happens because the Sagrada Família doesn’t do just being, instead it jumps at you and doesn’t let you go, even with the eternal construction cranes swinging around it) and Ginny feels constricted all around, because it’s too hot to stay and look and it’s too hot to go away. She stares at the strange towers (and they stare back) until it starts to hurt. “Come,” Tonks says gently, “let’s find a cool restaurant to eat.” They take a detour to Park Güell, and trailing her hands over the brightly coloured tiles, Ginny says to Tonks she might be in love with Gaudí. Tonks smiles a thin smile.

They’re truly swathed in heavy drapes of heat – the air pushes at them, pressing down on their shoulders. Tonks sleeps with her blankets kicked off and her mouth open – Ginny doesn’t sleep, is burnt, feels the laden air of the hotel room pregnant with stifling summer in her mouth and counts the droplets of sweat rolling off Tonks’ forehead.

They’re tourists again soon enough, strolling down La Rambla and smiling apologetically at merchants whose things they do not buy. The sun is relentless and Ginny’s shoulders are flaking (Tonks has already pulled off countless of strips of dead skin before they left, and now she makes sure Ginny’s shoulders are fully covered by her shirt). They stare down the harbour at the eye-blindingly impossibly blue sea starting where the land ends.

“I wish I lived here,” Ginny sighs, and Tonks smiles, stays silent.

They visit the Ciutat Vella, the Old City, and feel young. They plan to visit Parc de la Ciutadella and fail to find the time. “We’ll be back,” Tonks says easily as they enjoy the setting sun on Plaça de Catalunya, “there’s too much here we haven’t seen.”

Ginny thinks: “I’ve seen you” and it startles her for a moment, how her heart beats in her throat at the sight of Tonks, crowned in Spain’s friendly evening sun.

 

((ten months, in which they plan many trips that end up cancelled – Tonks’ job, Ginny’s quest for one the culprits – but in which Tonks also tells Ginny she loves travelling with her))

v. Florence

“Let’s take a tent this time,” Tonks had said, and there were visions of sleeping bags under a clear night sky, and cluttered unwashed camping cooking stuff, and them huddled together at night, stooped over late-time night food cooked on their own tiny stove. This image flashing in her mind, Ginny said yes.

Camping Michelangelo doesn’t disappoint, despite its overly touristy name – most of the people at the reception are Italian who only have the barest knowledge of English. Upon being asked by Tonks where they could find a public pool, one of the reception girls proceeds to check them out – afterwards they laugh over this, and love the impractical inconveniences of camping life. They have no chairs or table and spend their meals on the sun-warmed ground, chewing sand with their pasta, watching their neighbours unpack or pack and move on with their entire homes on their shoulders. Ginny tells Tonks she prefers this to the dingy hotels they had before, and Tonks replies that’s because here you feel the air all the time. In the mornings their tent is stifling because the early sun is already powerful, and the olive trees of camping Michelangelo are majestic but offer little shade. Ginny flees the heat, sweating heavily from the second she wakes, but Tonks only rolls over when she leaves the tent, flashes a sleepy grin and goes back to sleep. Ginny spends the first hour of the day by herself, drinking milk under a brilliant sky and trying not to listen to the sex going on in the next tent. (The fact that she’s strangely flustered when the occupants emerge and they turn out to be two girls is something that Ginny files away to the back of her brain.)

They’re happy in Florence and Ginny realises it fully when they’ve spent their first afternoon leisurely on Piazza della Signoria. Tonks knows about the Romans and the renaissance and she tells the stories of the statues frozen under the Loggia dei Lanzi. Tonks knows how to tell a story; her hands speak as much as her mouth does, and she flies from one statue to another – here’s Hercules fighting the centaur Nessus, not aware of his death coming closer, here’s Perseus with his muscles still tense after Medusa’s beheading and here the Romans steal the Sabine virgins. Ginny rests her head against the cool marble of the Loggia and feels her heart almost burst at Tonks’ enthusiasm. They’re happy in Florence – when they climb the dome of the Duomo, Ginny whispers this into the wind whipping around their heads.

What’s beautiful in Florence is this: the Italians sneaking around amongst the throngs of tourists (soon enough Ginny and Tonks know who to follow to find an authentic Italian spot); the renaissance spread thickly over the land, beautiful all around, every corner every street every house; the piazzas full of pigeons who eat from your hand; the people queuing up for the Uffizi or the Galleria, who smile, who don’t cut corners, who share the silent awe when they bump into Michelangelo and Bernini and themselves in the statues and the paintings; Tonks who leans over the Ponte Vecchio and stretches out her hands towards Ginny (this is a picture Ginny makes, and she develops the Muggle version of it as well). Florence is so beautiful that when Ginny wakes up and shares the first hour of the day with no one but herself, she looks over the valley in which the city sleepily wakes and feels her heart beat in her head. (She thinks about her wand, which she’s brought but hasn’t used, and how some magic is different than others.)

Four days into their stay, the girls from the next tent start packing their stuff. They’re Polish and manage a “Good bye, enjoy stay!” when Ginny and Tonks wish them a good journey. They wave and smile when they hoist their backpacks onto their shoulders and then they’re gone, on their way to other things.

“They’re lesbians,” Ginny says on an impulse.

“So?” Tonks replies easily and stretches out her arms over her head. The day is still young and the sun merciful.

“Nothing, they’re just lesbians.”

“They’re in love, who cares if there are two pairs of tits involved?”

Ginny feels her face burn. “I don’t, it’s just –”

Tonks smiles and finishes the sentence for her. “It’s just that you’ve never met a lesbian couple before.”

“Well, yeah,” Ginny says (and stays silent on the “and also, I think two pairs of tits are really fucking sexy and looking at those girls being a couple made my heart do a strange little flip”.)

“Well, Gin, I told you travelling would broaden your horizon, didn’t I? It’s not just about art or culture, it’s the travelling itself as well. This is an example of that,” Tonks tells her, closing her eyes and leaning back against the young olive tree next to their tent.

There’s a silence in which Ginny thinks that it’s true, and that it’s even more true because now she knows what to do with those things she’s been feeling, because now she’s seen girls kiss and she’s heard them fuck and now she knows it’s something that can actually happen. She looks at Tonks, at her closed eyes and the sun that paints her collarbones in shadow and light, and at how her hand lies still on her knee. She gulps and gathers her resolve – she has to do something, and maybe now is a good time, now is as good a time as any.

“Tonks?” Her voice is small and she feels young.

“Hm?” Tonks hums, not opening her eyes.

Ginny’s heart is hammering. “Do you think…” she stammers, lets the phrase die and starts a new one, “I think I might… understand what I feel now.”

There’s a short silence and there are Florence’s sounds curling upwards from the valley like tendrils of smoke. The Duomo’s Campanile is jingling the four o’clock tune. The Arno is steaming, a blue lint of gentle stream and reflection through the red of Florence.

“What’s that, then?” is Tonks’ sleepy response.

Ginny feels fear churning in her stomach – is it worth it? – but there is something else, a defiant sort of stubbornness that was always hers. I have to because I can’t live properly otherwise.

“That I might be a little bit in love with you,” she says, stumbling over the letters, the vowels sticking to the back of her throat while the consonants bump into her teeth powerfully. Her voice breaks a little by the end, making it sound like a question (but in reality it’s not).

Another sound-filled silence – the noisy birds in the olive tree, the French couple in the tent across having what sounds like a marital dispute, the distant tolling of the heavy bell (ding ding ding ding). Ginny watches Tonks, who is silent during this eternal moment, but whose shoulders seem to rise. She’s letting out a long breath, then looks at Ginny with a soft expression (Ginny’s heart seems to drop to her feet).

When she does speak, it’s not really an answer: “Let’s eat down in the city tonight, in that restaurant on the piazza del duomo?”

Sure, Ginny says, sure – and her heart is confused and doesn’t know which beats to beat or which to skip.

They eat and talk and dance majestically around the subject. The pizza is delicious, ridiculously large (not to mention ridiculously cheap) and across the piazza the tender soft lights snap into function, bathing the Duomo and the Italians in a soft light – and tonight even the tourists are blessed, on this place of immense crowds yet beating hearts. Ginny feels a little ill.

Back in the tent, she can’t take it any longer and spits out the words that had been hiding in the roof of her mouth all evening, bitter from the time they spent being turned over without being spoken: “Fucking say something, for Merlin’s fucking sake!”

“Fuck,” Tonks says softly and then looks at Ginny fully (which shocks Ginny for a moment – it’s then she realises how they’ve been evading each other’s eye). “Gin,” she says, and then she says it again, as if that’s all she had to say as an answer. They stare at each other in the gloom of the tent, hear the French couple in the tent across patching things up.

“Just say no, then,” Ginny eventually says, and her voice has a slightly pleading note (which she tries to banish).

“No,” Tonks says and as Ginny’s heart seems to skid to a painful, slow stop, she continues quickly: “I mean, no! No, I won’t say no. That’s – that’s what I mean. I – Gin, look.” She laughs a nervous laugh, has flung her arms around her knees, hugging herself closer to her own chest in the dark. A breath. “I think I might be a little bit in love with you too, but I’m still trying to get my head around what this means.”

So is Ginny, and they both pretend to sleep, having exchanged nothing but chaste goodnight kisses.

In the hot morning, Ginny crawls out of the tent and for once Tonks follows her. Her face is a little pale underneath the Italy-tanned skin. They share milk and their silence.

Then, Tonks bumps her shoulder purposefully into Ginny’s and smiles. “Hey,” she says and it’s then that Ginny thinks that it’s okay because they feel the same way; and this is something really truly good, something that might stay with them for a long time. She feels a little burst of something pleasantly hot and itchy when Tonks presses a tentative kiss to her jaw. They take the day off from sight-seeing and install themselves in the high grass along the Arno (exploring each other carefully under an inflamed sky; their lips, their eyes, their minds). Tonks pulls back from a kiss, leaning on her elbow, causing black hair to fall down on Ginny’s forehead. “This lasts longer than Florence?” she asks-says-asks because it’s only barely a question, more a statement. Ginny says yes yes yes and kisses upward until she finds Tonks again.

When they go home, they’re so certain even the flight stewardess notices, and proposes to bring some water for you and your girlfriend. Ginny and Tonks smile glowing smiles and kiss in the limited airplane space.

 

((four years, in which they re-invent themselves together, and Ginny tells her family while Tonks holds her hand, and Ron is the first to smile at them and say sons-in-law will never happen in this family and then things move quickly and soon enough everyone’s okay with everything and somehow it feels as if life is only now beginning – they travel each other together))

 

vi. The attic of The Burrow

In Tonks’ hand, they smile into the camera from under a Parisian umbrella, before the wind sweeps it away from them and they shriek and disappear from view (they never found the umbrella again). Ginny takes the picture gently from Tonks’ hand and lays it on top of its silent Muggle counterpart (in which the umbrella was never lost, and their smiles are frozen).

“We’ll need twenty thousand picture books for all of these, you know?” says Tonks’ muffled voice, head buried in a big dusty carton box.

“Well, it’s a good thing we’ve bought such a big house,” Ginny replies and grins at Tonks’ bum sticking out of the box. “You look so elegant like that, you know, it’s such a turn on!”

“Shut up,” Tonks says and pulls the top half of her body out of the box. There’s dust in her hair. “Remind me why we bought such a big house again?”

“For the pictures.”

“And for the babies,” Tonks grins.

Ginny coughs in the dusty air. “I don’t know about that.”

There’s a short silence; Ginny flips slowly through attic-stained Muggle pictures and Tonks beats the dust out of her hair.

“If we ever have children,” Tonks then says calmly, “I want them to have your hair.”

Ginny smiles at the pictures, something small and warm sloshing in her stomach. “I dunno, wouldn’t it be fun to have babies with changeable glow-in-the-dark hair?”

“There will be no mocking of glow-in-the-dark hair!” Tonks warns and points a finger in Ginny’s face. Ginny bites it. Tonks yelps and pounces on Ginny.

They laugh, wrestle each other for a moment and then settle together, bodies close, in a smiling soft silence, in the beam of light filtering through the roof. The dust is dancing around them.

“I hope the attic of our house is as dusty as this one,” Tonks says and Ginny feels lashes fluttering against her neck as Tonks closes her eyes.

“If it isn’t, we’ll make it so,” she replies semi-seriously and then pulls Tonks a little closer. “I’m very happy, you know.”

“Likewise,” Tonks mumbles, “now shut up and nap.”

Ginny closes her eyes, revels in the dark orange of the scarce light filtering through her eyelids, and feels safe, and feels warm, and feels the pictures settling and going to sleep with them in her pockets.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [City Life (Desires and Fears Mix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1358218) by [Woldy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woldy/pseuds/Woldy)




End file.
